"How long are you going to stop here in Dundee, captain?" I asked.
"Four days," he answered. "I'll be discharging tomorrow, and loading the next two days, and then I'll be away again."
"Lend me the clothes and a sovereign," said I. "I'll wire to my principal, the gentleman I told you about, to come here at once with clothes and money, so I'll repay you and hand your suit back first thing tomorrow morning, when I'll bring him to see you."
He immediately pulled a sovereign out of his pocket, and, turning to a locker, produced a new suit of blue serge and some necessary linen.
"Aye?" he remarked, a bit wonderingly. "You'll be for fetching him along here, then? And for what purpose?"
"I want him to take your evidence about picking me up," I answered. "That's one thing—and—there's other reasons that we'll tell you about afterwards. And—don't tell anybody here of what's happened, and pass the word for silence to your crew. It'll be something in their pockets when my friend comes along."
He was a cute man, and he understood that my object was to keep the news of my escape from Sir Gilbert Carstairs, and he promised to do what I asked. And before long—he and I being, as he had observed, very much of a size, and the serge suit fitting me very well—I was in the streets of Dundee, where I had never been before, seeking out a telegraph office, and twiddling the skipper's sovereign between thumb and finger while I worked out a problem that needed some little thought.
I must let my mother and Maisie know of my safety—at once. I must let Mr. Lindsey know, too. I knew what must have happened there at Berwick. That monstrous villain would sneak home and say that a sad accident had happened me. It made me grind my teeth and long to get my hands at his lying tongue when I thought of what Maisie and my mother must have suffered after hearing his tales and excuses. But I did not want him to know I was safe—I did not want the town to know. Should I telephone to Mr. Lindsey's office, it was almost certain one of my fellow-clerks there would answer the ring, and recognize my voice. Then everything would be noised around. And after thinking it all over I sent Mr. Lindsey a telegram in the following words, hoping that he would fully understand:—
"Keep this secret from everybody. Bring suit of clothes, linen, money, mother, and Maisie by next train to Dundee. Give post-office people orders not to let this out, most important. H.M."
I read that over half a dozen times before I finally dispatched it. It seemed all wrong, somehow—and all right in another way. And, however badly put it was, it expressed my meaning. So I handed it in, and my borrowed sovereign with it, and jingling the change which was given back to me, I went out of the telegraph office to stare around me.